The Third Reich

by Thomas Childers

  Few in the army leadership were satisfied with this strategy, and alternatives were being proposed as early as October. General Erich von Manstein, Rundstedt’s brilliant chief of staff, had begun pressing for a major revision of the plan that would fundamentally change the strategic thrust of the offensive. Manstein insisted that as currently construed, the plan was so unimaginative, so predictable and cautious that even if all went well, the plan could not deliver a decisive victory. The Allies would have little difficulty anticipating its moves, so that while the German offensive would gain ground, it would encounter very stiff resistance in Belgium and northern France, culminating in a stalemate similar to the static warfare of the Great War.

  Manstein argued that the bulk of the Wehrmacht’s armor and motorized forces should be concentrated to the south, in Rundstedt’s Army Group A, and that their mission would not be defensive but offensive. The main spearhead of the offensive would be shifted from a frontal assault in the north to a surprise attack through the Ardennes Forest, where the Allies would least expect it. Leading General von Rundstedt’s forces would be six armored and two motorized infantry divisions.

  Manstein was inspired by the revolutionary precepts of tank warfare developed by Heinz Guderian’s 1937 book entitled Achtung Panzer! Guderian argued that concentrated armored forces could operate independently of infantry, move swiftly to disperse enemy forces, disrupt their communications, and generally create an environment of unrelenting havoc. Essential to Guderian’s vision was close coordination between mass armored attacks and air strikes. As the armored spearheads shot forward, dive-bombers and fighters would pulverize the enemy from the sky. Mechanized units would follow, trailed by infantry moving on foot. The emphasis was on speed and surprise, shock and awe. In Manstein’s plan, Fedor von Bock, who had commanded troops in Austria and Poland, would attack in Holland and Belgium, drawing Allied troops northward. British and French forces, Manstein believed, would race north into Belgium to meet Bock’s advance, assuming that it was the main force. Then, once the Western Allies had committed themselves in Belgium, Rundstedt’s panzer divisions would come roaring out of the lightly defended Ardennes. Instead of turning south toward Paris, they would drive north by northwest toward the Channel coast, trapping the divisions of the British Expeditionary Force and the First French Army between the Channel, Bock’s forces, and Rundstedt’s tanks. The Allies in the north would be cut off from resupply and reinforcements and defeated.

  Hitler was taken with Manstein’s ideas, and in February he formally committed to the “Manstein plan,” making it his own. Studies by the army’s Enemy Assessment Division showed that French operational culture was characterized by cautious, detailed planning, and a great concern for security. It did not act swiftly and would be especially cautious when confronted by surprise. The British were good soldiers and well led, but, in the Wehrmacht’s view, tended to be even more ponderous than their French ally. Manstein’s was a plan fraught with enormous risks. Hitler and many in the High Command worried that the long, extended line of Rundstedt’s spearheads would be vulnerable to a French counterattack that would cut in behind the advancing armor, springing a trap that would leave the panzers encircled. The Ruhr would then beckon to the Allies. It would be a disaster from which the Wehrmacht would not recover, and Germany would lose the war. But after hesitating in his usual manner, Hitler was committed to the plan. Always a gambler, he was drawn to high-stakes risks. He was also more convinced than ever that his fate was guided by the Almighty, who had great plans for him.

  While the nervous generals talked about removing the Führer but did not act, an unknown cabinetmaker with Communist sentiments did. For weeks leading up to the annual celebration of the Beer Hall Putsch on November 8–9, Georg Elser had managed to build a bomb and plant it in a wooden, load-bearing pillar just behind the speaker’s podium in the Bürgerbräukeller’s great hall. On this annual occasion Hitler always addressed a packed house of party leaders, and his oration ran, as did most of his speeches, two to three hours. The speech was scheduled to begin at 8 p.m., and Elser set the bomb’s fuse to ignite at 9:30. But on this occasion, Hitler, to the surprise of all, spoke for a mere hour and then abruptly departed for Berlin. He was already onboard a Berlin-bound train when the bomb detonated, devastating much of the spacious hall, killing seven and injuring dozens of the three thousand in attendance.

  Elser was caught that very night attempting to cross the Swiss border and, after days of brutal interrogation at Gestapo headquarters in Berlin, was taken to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he lived as a “special prisoner” until April 1945, when he was transferred to Dachau and executed. The Nazi press attributed the bomb plot to the British secret service working with Elser, though the Gestapo quickly ascertained that the would-be assassin had acted alone. Hitler never believed that Elser was the lone assassin, but interpreted his “miraculous escape” as a “confirmation that Providence wishes me to attain my goals.”

  Two weeks after the explosion at the Bürgerbräukeller, Hitler convened his principal military commanders to explain his reasoning behind the offensive in the West. He gave an assessment of the military status of each of Germany’s enemies and allies as well as the Reich’s many military advantages. But the ultimate key to victory, he proclaimed with unabashed frankness, was himself. “As the last factor, I must in all modesty describe my own person: Irreplaceable. Neither a military man nor a civilian could replace me. Attempts at assassination may be repeated. I am convinced of my powers of intellect and of decision. . . . Time is working for our adversaries. Now there is a relationship of forces which can never be more propitious for us. No compromises. Hardness toward ourselves. I shall strike and not capitulate. The fate of the Reich depends only on me.” The time to act had come. His generals should not concern themselves with matters of international law or conventional military practice. “Wars are always ended by the annihilation of the opponent. Anyone who believes otherwise is irresponsible. . . . Breach of neutrality of Belgium and Holland is of no importance. No one will question that when we have won.”

  Preparations for Case Yellow got under way in earnest in February, when German intelligence became convinced that the British were preparing to mine the approaches to Norwegian ports, which, in fact, they were. This, Admiral Raeder, head of the navy, insisted, Germany could not allow. Iron ore was a crucial resource for the Nazi war machine, and Sweden was the Reich’s chief supplier. During winter months when the Baltic froze over, Swedish ore was delivered to Narvik in the far north of Norway and then proceeded by German supply ship along the Norwegian coast to Germany. If the English succeeded in mining Norway’s inshore navigation route and forcing German supply ships out into the open sea, where they would be vulnerable to interdiction by the Royal Navy, the result might be fatal. Raeder also stressed that the Norwegian ports would offer important facilities for German submarines patrolling the North Atlantic. If, on other hand, the Allies secured a foothold in Norway, their airbases and naval facilities would control Germany’s northern flank and threaten the Fatherland itself. Hitler was also aware of British interest in traversing northern Scandinavia to supply Finnish forces fighting the Russians. That would entail a British invasion of Norway, which the Germans could not permit. As a consequence, German planning for an invasion of Denmark and Norway commenced immediately.

  On April 9, 1940, as the British mining operation commenced, Germany launched air, sea, and land operations against both Denmark and Norway. Denmark fell with virtually no opposition, but the Norwegians put up a spirited, tenacious defense. German paratroopers secured Oslo’s airport on the first day of the invasion, and in the following days German forces seized all major Norwegian ports—Narvik, Trondheim, Namsos, Andalsnes, and Oslo. The Allies, not for the last time, were caught by surprise at the speed of German operations and scrambled to send troops. In late May Allied forces arrived at Narvik, besieging the heavily outnumbered Germans in the port. Although the Royal Navy inf
licted heavy losses on the German Kriegsmarine (Battle Fleet), it also suffered significant losses, and on June 7, with war in Western Europe then raging, the Allies withdrew their troops, leaving the Germans in control of Denmark and Norway. It was not a good omen for the Allies, and in its aftermath the Chamberlain government fell. Daladier’s fell soon thereafter.

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  On May 10, the ax fell on Western Europe. On a day when the newly chosen French premier, Paul Reynaud, resigned and France’s supreme military commander, Maurice Gamelin, did as well, the Wehrmacht smashed into Holland and Belgium. The Drôle de Guerre was over. As Bock’s troops drove into Holland, British and French troops, as anticipated, rushed northward to meet them. Their suspicions should have been aroused when they encountered little resistance from the Luftwaffe, allowing them to move rapidly toward their predetermined defensive positions. Using airborne troops—paratroopers and gliders—Bock scored dramatic victories over the Dutch and Belgians, as the Western Allies hurried their forces north to meet the advancing Germans.

  But as Allied forces moved into place in Belgium, the Germans sprang the trap: the panzers of Rundstedt’s Army Group A came roaring out of the Ardennes, catching the undermanned French by surprise. Sedan, site of Emperor Napoleon III’s catastrophic defeat in 1870, fell on May 12, and by May 15 the panzers were across the Meuse bridges. Led by Generals Guderian and Erwin Rommel, the panzers did not turn north to engage the Allied forces there but drove rapidly westward toward the Channel coast. By May 20, German troops reached the coast near the mouth of the Somme and wheeled north toward the French Channel ports of Calais, Boulogne, and Dunkirk.

  The British Expeditionary Force and the French First Army were trapped, cut off from the rest of their forces in France, and began a fighting withdrawal to the coast, where they hoped to be evacuated. The Germans pushed them into the port city of Dunkirk and onto its beaches. The panzers were only one and half miles from the port, primed for the final assault that would annihilate the British Expeditionary Force. It had all the makings of a sheer catastrophe. But as the panzers closed in for the coup de grâce, Hitler suddenly ordered them to halt. Convinced by Rundstedt, he argued that tanks were ill suited for the marshy terrain, and besides, he needed to have them ready for the last great push toward Paris. Halder, Guderian, and Manstein were furious. The complete annihilation of the British Army was within their grasp, and the Führer had snatched that opportunity away from them at the last moment.

  Hitler assigned the reduction of Dunkirk to the Luftwaffe and Bock’s infantry units pushing from the north. What followed was what the British hailed as the “miracle of Dunkirk.” Between May 26 and June 4, a ragtag armada of naval vessels, fishing trawlers, tugs, and private yachts miraculously plucked roughly 338,000 British and 100,000 French troops from the coast despite incessant attacks from the air. The troops were saved, but behind them they left the wreckage of the British Expeditionary Force. All their heavy equipment—hundreds of vehicles, tanks, and artillery pieces—lay scattered in the sands of Dunkirk, and the Germans took 40,000 prisoners. Hitler later implied that he had spared the British troops as an act of goodwill, thinking that such forbearance would render the British more open to negotiations. The British certainly did not see it that way, and any interpretation of Hitler’s actions based on a supposition of his “goodwill” rests more on fantasy than empirical evidence.

  After the fall of Dunkirk, German forces wheeled southward, quickly broke through the defensive line established by the new French commanding general, Maxime Wegand, and moved on the capital. Paris was declared an open city; French units withdrew, and on June 14 German troops marched triumphantly down the Champs-Elysees. Church bells rang all over the Reich, boats blared their horns on the Rhine, spontaneous celebrations erupted in the cities. Meanwhile, Reynaud’s reconstituted government fled first to Tours and then to Bordeaux and considered continuing the fight to the French colonies in North Africa. But with German troops racing southward, slowed more by thousands of panicked civilians crowding the roads than by the French army, Reynaud was pushed aside, and the aged Philippe Pétain, hero of the Great War, assumed leadership of the government on June 17.

  Reynaud had brought the marshal out of retirement in the hope that the “savior of Verdun” would stiffen the army’s will to resist, but it did not happen. Instead, Pétain, backed by the highest-ranking French generals, was convinced that the military situation was hopeless and removing the French government to North Africa was dishonorable. As for their British allies, they were doomed, willing to fight to the last drop of French blood but not beyond. Alliance with Britain was “a marriage with a corpse.” Under the circumstances, he drew what he deemed the obvious, rational conclusion: he asked for an immediate armistice and integration into Hitler’s New Order. The Germans readily accepted.

  In a particularly cruel twist to France’s humiliation, Hitler had the old railroad carriage in which the Germans had signed the Armistice in 1918 taken from a museum in Paris and delivered to a clearing in the Forest of Compiègne, to the exact spot where it had stood in November 1918. Hitler was overjoyed. In six weeks, the lowly corporal of the Great War had achieved a stunning victory that had eluded the mighty Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and the Kaiser’s army for four blood-soaked years. William Shirer managed to be on the scene and watched as Hitler waited to enter the carriage. He had seen Hitler’s face “many times at the great moments of his life. But Today! It is afire with scorn, anger, hate, revenge, triumph.” Hitler swiftly snapped his hands on his hips, arched his shoulders, planted his feet wide apart. It was “a magnificent gesture of defiance, of burning contempt for this place now and all that it has stood for in the twenty-two years hence.”

  The terms of the armistice were surprisingly generous. Germany was to control Paris, the industrial north, and the coastal areas of Atlantic France—approximately two thirds of the country. Unlike Poland, France would not disappear from the map. A superficially autonomous region in central France was to be left to the new conservative government of Marshal Pétain, who would rule from the small resort town of Vichy. Hitler was eager to be rid of this conflict that he had tried to avoid or at least defer. His ambitions lay not in Western Europe, but in the East, and he did not wish to deploy large numbers of troops to occupy France. A cooperative France—Pétain suggested the term “collaborationist”—was the result. And the new regime in Vichy seemed eager to fit into Hitler’s New Order in Europe.

  Before leaving France, Hitler wanted to fulfill a dream that had been with him since his early years in Vienna. He wanted to see Paris. As a young man, he had studied the city’s architecture in books, even knowing in great detail the interior of the Paris Opera House. On June 28, he summoned Speer and two other architects to accompany him and his entourage on a tour of Paris. Early on a gray June morning Hitler traveled through the deserted streets in an open touring car to see the sights of the city—the Pantheon, the Eiffel Tower, Sacré-Coeur, the Invalides, where he visited the tomb of Napoleon, and, of course, the Opera. By nine o’clock the sightseeing was over. He would never see Paris again.

  Germany’s stunningly swift conquest of France sent shockwaves throughout the world, but nowhere more than in London and isolationist Washington, where in September the first American peacetime draft was introduced in response. It had been universally assumed in military and political circles that the French would blunt the German offensive, and a long gruesome war of attrition would be the result. Now, suddenly, France was defeated; England driven back to its own shores; and Germany was the master of the European continent. France’s ignominious collapse, the Nazi press explained, was due to the fact that “the French had placed leadership in the hands of the Jews,” who proved to be “France’s gravediggers.”

  Nazi propaganda notwithstanding, the key to Germany’s victory in France lay elsewhere. It was not technological or numerical superiority, as is so often claimed, nor was it the oft-cited poor quality of the French troops. Fren
ch soldiers, the ordinary Poilu, fought bravely and in highly compromised situations. All these factors played contributing roles, but by far the most significant factor in accounting for France’s unexpected collapse was its military leadership. The French High Command consisted of men of the last war, men who could grasp neither the speed of German operations nor the Wehrmacht’s operational strategy. Germany’s lightning assault and sheer audacity were utterly unanticipated, and the Allies, well equipped and well trained, operated with a conception of speed and maneuver that was still mired in the mud of the Great War.

  General Maurice Gamelin, the seventy-two-year-old commander of the joint British and French forces, was confident of victory, excessively so, and was slow to react to the German onslaught. The British Expeditionary Force was hardly more robust. While the French High Command worried excessively about signals security, which delayed its responses to the German offensive, German spearheads raced forward, sent signals in the clear, and did not wait for clearances. Speed and surprise, they gambled, would trump security. Unlike their French and English counterparts, German tanks were equipped with radios, allowing the panzers to communicate directly with one another and with Luftwaffe units providing crucial air support. The result was a degree of speed and maneuverability that kept the Allies perpetually off guard and one step behind.